First we did L.A. Now we’re coming to Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.

It’s VB’s mobile developer and publisher tour, and I’m calling it the “Great White North(west)” roadshow, for fairly obvious reasons. We’re coming to town to share the results of our massive 4-part mobile developer research project, which is based on the contributions of over 1,500 developers with over 1 billion MAU, an exhaustive analysis of over 1.8 million Android and iOS apps, and much more data.

We’ve studied what the best developers do differently. We’ve analyzed which app analytics solutions are disproportionately found in the highest-ranking apps. We’ve discovered which engagement apps drive the best user experience. We’ve learned what monetization strategies are most successful. How the smartest publishers find the best users for the lowest prices. And much, much more.

Now, we want to share it with you.

We want to bring together small groups of the top mobile publishers and developers in each of these cities — about 200 in each. We’ll feed you, wine you and dine you, and speak to you. We’ll also have some local publishers on hand to speak as well (ping me if you’re interested).

]]>0Mobile developers: Announcing VB’s Great White North(west) roadshowA 4-year-old top-grossing game? How Kingdoms At War is still making money years after launchhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/01/31/4-year-old-top-grossing-game-how-kingdoms-at-war-is-still-making-money-years-after-launch/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/31/4-year-old-top-grossing-game-how-kingdoms-at-war-is-still-making-money-years-after-launch/#commentsFri, 31 Jan 2014 19:10:16 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=889611So how has A Thinking Ape's game stayed so high for so long?
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In the fast-paced world of mobile games, you usually sink or swim — fast. And even if you swim, it’s only for a short while.

So how has A Thinking Ape‘s Kingdoms at War stayed so high for so long?

Kingdoms at War was the eighth-highest grossing game on iPhone in 2010 — the dark ages of mobile gaming. It was the 13th highest in 2011, which is like medieval times for mobile. And after hanging around in the top 40 for another couple of years, the venerable game hit number 20 just a month ago, in December.

“There’s no secret formula,” A Thinking Ape’s Derek Yip said Thursday at GROWtalks in Vancouver. “But if you play Kingdoms at War for 30 days, you will play on infinitely.”

Mobile players are brutal, especially for freemium apps that we’ve downloaded for free. People use most apps are once and abandon them viciously, never to be opened or played or read again. For Kingdoms at War, 50 percent of first-day players come back and play it on day two. That’s actually not bad — but the number goes down and down and down. By day 30, only 10 percent of day one people are still playing.

Then something interesting happens.

“Kingdoms at War has low retention,” Yip said. “But on day 30, it flatlines … essentially the game stops losing players.”

That means that A Thinking Ape’s lifetime user value for the game is huge. And this means the company can invest heavily in user acquisition, secure in the knowledge that spending $1, $2, or even $3 per committed long-term user will ultimately provide positive return on investment.

The question, of course, is how.

When the company started noticing the incredible retention in Kingdoms at War, it started asking why. Other games it had made — or other companies had made — were as good, with great art, design, gameplay, user experience, sound, and content. What was the difference? It had to be something beyond the core product, the company speculated, that was generating player longevity.

It was when the company looked beyond the game and to the players — and specifically the connections between players — that the answer became evident. Compare to A Thinking Ape’s other games, Kingdoms at War had much higher levels of actions between players: messages, actions done as a group, and chat.

“That’s the key difference,” Yip says “Our users don’t naturally want to be social when they download our products, but in Kingdoms at War we were able to create incentives to connect, and that led to a high level of engagement.”

In other words, it’s social.

Because it’s social, gamers develop strong relationships within the game. Because they develop strong relationships, their make friends. And because the context for their friendship is the game, they don’t leave.

A Thinking Ape built that social connection, somewhat unintentionally, in four ways:

Incentivized user-to-user interaction: Via user-to-user gifting, Facebook liking, and LinkedIn endorsements, A Thinking Ape built in a series of simple, one-click actions that not only create connection, but also stimulate reciprocation. Voilà: community.

Incentivized group action: By encouraging groups to tackle challenges together and giving out free bonuses when certain number of products are sold, or providing incentives for other users to join, A Thinking Ape created an environment which favored group formation.

Incentivized community competition: By ensuring that people compete against real people, not bots, by making people work hard for rewards and by ensuring that all rewards are visible and obvious on player profiles and websites, A Thinking Ape facilitated intense competition.

Incentivized next visits: The hardest part, Yip said, was incentivizing the next visit — the next open of the app. But if you’ve done the previous three correctly, he said, you’ve actually accomplished this one, too. Every time a user-to-user interaction happens, it sends a message. Every time a group needs help, the game sends a message. And every time the game sends a message, it brings users back.

“That’s a positive feedback loop,” Yip said. “You need to create something that cannot be replicated. For us, it’s relationships with friends … so that users do not leave.”

It’s appears to have been working.

Today, four years after initial launch, Kingdoms at War is still making money and still hitting the charts. In fact, according to Think Gaming, it’s still making almost $15,000 every day on iOS alone. That’s not exactly Candy Crush Saga money, which is grossing $975,000 every single day.

But it’s not bad for a small, independent games studio. And, it’s not bad for a four-year-old game.

]]>0A 4-year-old top-grossing game? How Kingdoms At War is still making money years after launchThis is the world’s first Bitcoin ATMhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/10/29/this-is-the-worlds-first-bitcoin-atm/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/29/this-is-the-worlds-first-bitcoin-atm/#commentsTue, 29 Oct 2013 16:02:40 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=848913Want a coffee? Now you can pay in Bitcoin.
The world's first Bitcoin ATM is opening up for business this morning at a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. You can now buy, sell, and trade Bitcoin at a real, physical machine, depositing cash and checks for Bitcoin.
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Want a coffee? Now you can pay in Bitcoin.

The world’s first Bitcoin ATM is opening for business this morning at a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. You can now buy, sell, and trade Bitcoin at a real, physical machine, depositing cash and checks for Bitcoin.

“This is progress … we’re bridging the gap and bringing reality to this digital currency,” Jordan Kelley, CEO of Robocoin, the company behind the ATM, told me this morning in Vancouver. “We’re bringing it to the masses.”

It’s all part of Robocoin’s plan to make virtual currency Bitcoin “grandma friendly.” The company wants to make the geeky crypto-currency available to anyone, right on the street corner. The Robocoin is a full automated teller machine with biometric security — a hand scanner — that allows you to buy Bitcoin in any of 60 different currencies. It is integrated with Mt. Gox and Bitstamp, two of the premier Bitcoin exchanges, and can be placed in stores, at technology conferences, and in financial service organizations.

And yes, you can now withdraw your Bitcoin — in the currency of your country — right on the street.

Kelley said the machines are going into Canada first as a strategic decision — some of Robocoin’s top dealers (who buy and place the $20,000 ATMs) are in Canada. Robocoin machines will soon be placed into other Canadian locations in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and the nation’s capital, Ottawa. There’s also the small detail that Canada’s financial system is a little less onerous to navigate than that of the U.S., making regulatory approval easier to obtain.

Above: Everyone’s excited about the new ATM

Image Credit: John Koetsier

Most of the people visiting the coffee shop seemed bemused by the newfangled device.

I’m not sure my “virtual currency that is digitally mined and without any central authority” explanation helped him all that much.

That, of course, is precisely the problem Robocoin and its dealers have faced and will continue to face. But Kelley, who likes to call Bitcoin “the people’s currency,” is confident that there is enough of an active userbase to make the Bitcoin ATM an idea whose time has come.

“It’s going to be a daily use machine,” he said. “This is really going to add liquidity to the market … providing that instantaneous access which has never happened before.”

If that’s the case, Robocoin will have to become known for safety and security — something that people want on Facebook, but demand from their financial institutions. CTO John Russell told me that none of the data the machine uses is publicly available on the Internet; it’s all transacted over a secure VPN connection.

And if someone does a smash-and-grab with a pickup truck, grabbing the entire ATM machine?

The entire system has been architected not just with physical security in mind for the device, and digital security for your Bitcoin funds, but also for regulatory compliance. Bitcoin has a bad rap as being the currency of choice for illegal transactions, and Kelley is determined that Robocoin will stay aboveboard.

“It’s architected with absolute security in mind,” he told me. “And secondly, it was really built with compliance in mind … when an operator sets up shop, they have full visibility of their customers, and we’re sending them all the information necessary to adhere to their governmental regulations … to ensure there’s no trouble.”

The owner/operator of this local machine is Jackson Warren. He’ll make pennies on each transaction — as will Robocoin — and he sees big things in the future:

“When we have thousands of these things all over the world, then it’s going to really get exciting.”

That’s a sentiment Kelley echoes — and one I heard from dozens of others checking out the coffee shop.

“It’s a pretty exciting day,” Kelley told me. “I feel pretty damn good — even though I only had five hours of sleep!”

]]>1This is the world’s first Bitcoin ATMAccelerators doubling annually: too much of a good thing?http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/06/accelerator-glut/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/06/accelerator-glut/#commentsTue, 06 Aug 2013 17:08:47 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=786152"The hypocrisy of accelerators is that we give give you money and you go innovate while we do business as usual," 500 Startups' Paul Singh says.
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The hip way to start a tech company is definitely via an accelerator. But for how long?

The number of accelerators has grown from just a handful a few years ago to more than 200 globally today. They help startups with small amounts of funding and liberal doses of training, coaching, and connections, but each is constantly seeking talent, requiring investment, and spitting out a newly-minted set of startups two or three times a year.

Can that many accelerators continue to coexist? Or even exist?

That’s just one of the questions Paul Singh of 500 Startups, Debbie Landa of GrowLab, and about 50 other managing directors of accelerators will try to answer at Grow Conference in mid-August in Vancouver, Canada. Directors of accelerators from South America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, China, and of course the U.S. and Canada will be in attendance.

“Accelerators are getting squeezed on both sides,” Singh told me last week. “On one side there’s the sheer number of accelerators, and on the other side founders are demanding more — more demo days, more events, more mentors, more (and better) startups in each cohort.”

What you used to be able to do with one or two people now takes five to seven, Singh said, citing one accelerator that puts on an astounding 30 public events each year. As a result, he added, “I really wouldn’t wish running an accelerator on my worst enemy — it’s very tough.”

In the ’90s, we used to call accelerators incubators, says Landa, who is the driving force behind the Grow conference. Most incubators ended up failing.

Incubators were less focused on investment than on mentoring entrepreneurs through the early stages of the company life cycle. And it’s precisely to save today’s crop of accelerators from passing prematurely that Grow is hosting its closed-door symposium.

Back to the beginning

In 2008 entrepreneur Paul Graham founded Y Combinator, the archetype of today’s accelerators, after selling ViaWeb and thus “solving the money problem.” Since then, Y Combinator has launched over 500 companies, each with what Graham says is an average $45.2 million valuation.

Another long-standing accelerator, TechStars, has launched 168 startups, 90 percent of which are still in operation. 500 Startups is another major competitor, with plans to launch far more startups than its name suggests and a strong track record of going global to find them.

“In late 2009 there were only about 20 accelerators around the world,” Singh told me. “But by 2012 there were about 150.”

The number of accelerators has been doubling annually, and that’s brought its own set of problems — problems that Landa, Singh, and other want to address now, before there’s another incubator-style meltdown.

Accelerate this!

One of the reasons is that accelerators have hard costs that other types of investors simply don’t. A Sand Hill VC, for instance, feels no inclination to provide office space for his or her investments, but an accelerator typically does. And while VCs don’t organize very many informative and educational events for young entrepreneurs, most accelerators host at least one a month, each of which has to be meticulously planned, managed, and executed.

The truly hard problem that accelerators face is finding, attracting, and developing the best talent. With the number of accelerators doubling annually, there’s a lot of competition for good startups and good founders. Accelerators no longer have the pick of the litter; they have to scrap for talent, working hard to differentiate themselves as the best place for an entrepreneur to risk his or her time and energy and startup.

It’s unbelievably critical to get the best startups, Singh says, because only the very best startups generate enough follow-on venture capital, investment, and growth to pay for the entire operation of an accelerator.

“Most people treat early stage venture capital as an asset class — if you invest in enough startups, you’ll be fine,” he told me. “But instead it follows a power law. So, if you don’t have the best startups, you won’t make it.”

In other words, without a Reddit, an AirBnB, or a DropBox, there’d be no class of 2014 at Y Combinator.

Accelerate yourself

The biggest problem, perhaps, is that accelerators are not changing as quickly as the startups they are purportedly accelerating.

“The hypocrisy of accelerators is that we give you money, and you go innovate while we do business as usual,” Singh says.

In other words, while most accelerators spend 80 percent of their resources on day-to-day operational expenses and 20 percent on marketing, Singh suggests those numbers need to be flipped. Like founders need to stop focusing completely on day-to-day tactics and product, and start focusing more on distribution, accelerators need to focus most of their attention on intake.

“You’ve gotta figure it all out, but what you live and die by is whether you get good founders to come,” he says.

Nothing’s completely broken yet, Landa suggests. But at the rate accelerators are opening, it’s critical to figure out these kind of challenges so that there isn’t an accelerator meltdown in 2014.

]]>0Accelerators doubling annually: too much of a good thing?Equity crowdfunding by unaccredited investors is legal in exactly one place in North Americahttp://venturebeat.com/2013/05/29/crowdfunding-for-equity-by-unaccredited-investors-is-legal-in-exactly-one-place-in-north-america/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/29/crowdfunding-for-equity-by-unaccredited-investors-is-legal-in-exactly-one-place-in-north-america/#commentsThu, 30 May 2013 02:55:28 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=747296"BC has had legalized crowdfunding for a decade," super-angel Mike Volker said last night at the Vancouver Enterprise Forum event on crowdfunding. "It's the only place in North America, and there are no restrictions, no limits."
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific!

Almost a year after President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law, crowdfunding for equity is still not legal … at least for the 99 percent of people that are not accredited investors. But there is at least one place in North America where crowdfunding for equity has been legal for a decade.

“BC has had legalized crowdfunding for a decade,” super-angel Mike Volker said last night at the Vancouver Enterprise Forum event on crowdfunding. “It’s the only place in North America, and there are no restrictions, no limits.”

Volker has been an angel for 30 years and currently runs two mutual-fund like investment pools that invest in startups. One is set up “normally” for accredited investors, and one uses a unique instrument to British Columbia: an “offering memorandum,” which allows a startup to sell its securities to anyone, regardless of their relationship, wealth, or minimum value of securities being purchased.

Crowdfunding for startups is now legal in the U.S., and you can actually market your equity online now, but only to accredited investors. The Crowdfund Act opened some doors, but only that one percent of the population can participate. That’s an unfortunately small crowd.

Above: Mike Volker on a panel at VEF (second from left)

Image Credit: John Koetsier

And even when it works, crowdfunding for equity in the U.S. has onerous reporting requirements, which could cost up to $10,000 or more for a raise of only $100,000.

The only requirement in British Columbia? Audited financial statements. Approximate cost: perhaps $3,000.

That’s something that U.S. crowdfunding sites like Fundable would love to be able to offer, but cannot legally today. And that doesn’t look likely to change soon, given the massive amount of SEC regulation that currently encumbers the JOBS Act and the Crowdfund Act. In fact, some crowdfunding investors say that the way the SEC has implemented the new law has actually made investing harder, not easier.

“In their attempts to make this happen the SEC has made it very complicated for portals and brokers,” Volker said. “You need a broker, so he needs a commission, and then the broker has tremendous responsibilities such as validating criminal record checks. It’s basically like a mini-IPO, and I predict it’s not going to do very well.”

But be careful what you wish for, American investors.

In spite of its availability in BC, the offering memorandum has not resulted in a flood of funding, crowd or otherwise. In fact, Volker says, it’s pretty much gone unnoticed:

“Everyone in BC can do it, and most BCers don’t know it.”

Perhaps that’s because it was too early, too bleeding edge. And perhaps now in the age of Kickstarter and Indiegogo it has a much better chance. There are certainly interesting places to use it and entrepreneurs who would find it useful.

“You can use the offering memorandum if you have investors lined up who don’t meet the angel investor qualifications,” Volker says. “It’s also useful if you’ve raised $400,000 via angels and now you want to bring on micro-angels or cherubs and add a little more.”

]]>0Equity crowdfunding by unaccredited investors is legal in exactly one place in North AmericaRyan Holmes: HootSuite on the same user growth curve as Evernote, Zendeskhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/ryan-holmes-hootsuite-on-the-same-user-growth-curve-as-evernote-zendesk/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/ryan-holmes-hootsuite-on-the-same-user-growth-curve-as-evernote-zendesk/#commentsFri, 05 Apr 2013 23:02:02 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=711653"We're kinda matching Zendesk and Evernote in user growth curve," Holmes said. "Our progressive cycle to each additional million is getting shorter and shorter, which is a good thing."
]]>Four months after hitting five million users, social media management company HootSuite has surpassed six million users, putting it on a pace to gain more than three million users a year, even without further acceleration.

That’s impressive growth, and it’s along the lines of other top software-as-a-service players who are household names in Silicon Valley and beyond.

“We’re kinda matching Zendesk and Evernote in user growth curve,” HootSuite CEO Holmes told me this morning. “Our progressive cycle to each additional million is getting shorter and shorter, which is a good thing.”

The Vancouver-based company, which counts 79 of the Fortune 100 as its clients, also continues to excel at enterprise sales. Sales to enterprises under $10 billion in value grew 272 percent in the first quarter of 2013, HootSuite said, and sales to enterprises over $10 billion grew 900 percent.

“We’ve seen a very nice progression of users from our free to premium product,” he said. “Often organizations of 100+ people are on board, all at the free level, and then when they become a paying client we’ll help tie all their accounts together.”

The big new features coming in the next month are in security and analytics, Holmes told me, as HootSuite puts more technology in place to prevent hacking or phishing attacks. One of the most problematic security issues, of course, is via internal users who go rogue. To limit this risk, HootSuite is enhancing its account provisioning and LDAP support so that internal users’ social media account access can be easily and safely managed.

“If you give them direct account access … you’re giving them the keys to the kingdom,” Holmes said. “Then you’re relying on social networks to turn them off, and that can take days. We’ve seen that with McDonalds and Burger King recently.”

In terms of analytics, HootSuite is capitalizing on the fact that its members send out over three million social media messages each day to help brands become more viral.

New tools in HootSuite will help brand managers know not only how they’re doing on one network versus another — which content is successful on Twitter, Facebook, or elsewhere — but also which of their social media managers is more effective at engaging social media users. And then, of course, sharing those lessons so all can benefit.

All of that growth requires more head count, which ballooning 250 percent last year — partially due to acquisitions such as Seesmic — and will grow another 60 to 80 percent this year, Holmes said. Which, of course, necessitated new offices, that HootSuite built in a former police station in east Vancouver.

It’s also something that reminds me of Holme’s comments a year ago about not selling out too early. He felt at the time that HootSuite could become a billion-dollar company.

Those feelings haven’t changed — if anything, they’ve increased:

“We’re getting closer all the time,” Holmes said. “I’m not interesting in selling out … we have a huge opportunity looking ahead, and the billion-dollar number is just a stick in the sand. Hopefully we’ll run right through that and keep going!”

It’s startup accelerator GrowLab’s demo day tonight in Vancouver, Canada, and I’m live, on location intrepidly reporting before I dash off to my phone booth tonight to transform into my regular office-bound oafish existence. Demo Day is at District 319, an abandoned Asian movie house-turned funky event space, with ominous No Minors Allowed signs decorating the entrance, and the magic starts in just two and a half hours.

There are seven startups presenting today, all of which received $20-25,000 in preliminary funding from GrowLab in exchange for five to nine percent equity. The founders are currently in their holy-mother-it’s-our-last-chance-to-practice mode, but I’ll be chatting with each in about an hour.

“I’m excited, there’s a lot of energy here … it’s definitely been a journey with GrowLab,” said KarmaHire’s James Clift “I’m super-proud of my team and what we’ve accomplished, and excited for the future.”

All of them spent the last three months working around the clock preparing for this moment:

ePACT is the emergency network that connects families, organizations and entire communities via web and mobile access to critical information, communication and support in any crisis.

KarmaHire revolutionizes the 9B recruitment advertising market. It is an optimized hiring platform for fast growing companies to create high converting recruiting pages in minutes, attract better talents, and increase their ROI.

Procurify is a spend management solution for organization of all sizes. It is an online software that is easy-to-use, secure, and cost effective.

Spacelist is the MLS for commercial real estate. With over 16 million square feet of available space, businesses can clearly see all their options, setup a tour and move into a great space with less stress and less confusion than ever before.

Nanu Interactive develops applications that add sharing and magic to family activities. We want to enrich the things you do by using technology to make them magical.

OOHLALA is the must have collage app that helps you connect with your campus life.

Will Pwn 4 Food makes fast-action 3D games that you can play on their website, anytime, anywhere for actual cash and prizes!

Today’s a big day and a lot is riding on the startups’ pitches. Investors and mentors will be in the crowd watching, and up to five of the most successful graduates will receive a convertible note for $150,000 from the Business Development Bank of Canada.

]]>0Live at GrowLab Demo Day in VancouverSilicon Valley, Tel Aviv, L.A., Seattle, and NYC lead top 20 tech hubs on the planethttp://venturebeat.com/2012/11/20/silicon-valley-tel-aviv-l-a-seattle-and-nyc-lead-top-20-tech-hubs-on-the-planet/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/20/silicon-valley-tel-aviv-l-a-seattle-and-nyc-lead-top-20-tech-hubs-on-the-planet/#commentsWed, 21 Nov 2012 00:39:35 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=577799The Startup Genome has analyzed 50,000 startups around the world to create what it is calling the first "data-driven ranking" of the top 20 tech hubs on the planet.
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific!

The Startup Genome has analyzed 50,000 startups around the world to create what it is calling the first “data-driven ranking” of the top 20 tech hubs on the planet. And to highlight just how important startups are to national and global economies.

Who knew, for example, that Sydney, Australia, is global capital of “data-driven startups?” Or that the top nine startups of the last 15 years have generated nearly a trillion dollars in value, helped along by the likes of Facebook, Google, and Amazon? And while everyone would likely have guessed that Silicon Valley is the top hub of entrepreneurship on the planet, with Tel Aviv high on the list (if not exactly second), Los Angeles coming in third is a bit of a surprise.

The conclusions are based on data from startups that use the Startup Compass, a tool that helps founders make better decisions through data. Startup Genome analyzed factors such as startup incidence, funding availability, business performance, founder mindset, technology trends, support networks, and talent availability to find the hottest locations to start and grow a company.

Here are the top 20 technology hubs, as defined by the Startup Genome:

Silicon Valley

Tel Aviv

Los Angeles

Seattle

New York City

Boston

London

Toronto

Vancouver

Chicago

Paris

Sydney

Sao Paulo

Moscow

Berlin

Waterloo (Canada)

Singapore

Melbourne

Bangalore

Santiago

More valuable than the ranking, Startup Genome provided the ranking data for each technology hub on eight key criteria. Using these criteria you can see, for example, that while Vancouver ranks 14th in the support index, probably due to being a relatively young ecosystem, it ranks second in the mindset index (indicating that it has plenty of eager and driving founders) and fourth in the talent index.

Tel Aviv, on the other hand, ranks second in startup output and equivalent to Silicon Valley in funding, but only 12th in performance, perhaps due to Israeli startups’ sometimes-wondered-at predilection for building smaller companies, outfits that don’t turn into enormous enterprises.

]]>1Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, L.A., Seattle, and NYC lead top 20 tech hubs on the planetDebbie Landa, founder of GrowLab, on fashion, tech, conferences, and investinghttp://venturebeat.com/2012/09/11/debbie-landa-founder-of-growlab-on-fashion-tech-conferences-and-investing/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/11/debbie-landa-founder-of-growlab-on-fashion-tech-conferences-and-investing/#commentsTue, 11 Sep 2012 12:40:13 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=528850After spending the first ten years of her working life in the fashion industry, Landa moved from fashion to technology. She's become one of the most influential connectors in Silicon Valley, and has helped, invested in, or worked with over a thousand startups.
]]>Debbie Landa is the founder and chief executive of Dealmaker Media, which produces tech conferences such as Under the Radar and GROW. She’s also the founder of GrowLab, an accelerator with offices in both in San Francisco and Vancouver, Canada.

After spending the first ten years of her working life in the fashion industry, Landa moved from fashion to technology. She’s become one of the most influential connectors in Silicon Valley, and has helped, invested in, or worked with over a thousand startups.

We caught up with her at the recent Grow Conference in Vancouver.

VentureBeat: You moved from fashion to technology. Why?

Landa: Fashion’s boring (laughing). Ok, it’s not boring, it’s just … it became monotonous, I did for ten years, and, when you’re in the fashion industry, it’s all about trends and seeing around corners and knowing what’s coming in the next year to two to three years, and it just became repetitive after a while, and the internet came around, and I started seeing that and thinking, OMG, my mind was just blown.

And it was moving so fast, and that was the next cool thing.

VentureBeat: Best funding decision you ever made?

Landa: I think it — DAHHH — putting money into my own company (laughing).

VentureBeat: Best thing about producing conferences?

Landa: The result at the end of the conference: how happy people are, and how you’ve changed their lives.

Landa: It’s like your birthday party that you threw … as many friends as you have you’re never positive they’re all going to come to your party!

VentureBeat: Most regretted funding decision?

Landa: That’s NOT going to happen (laughing).

VentureBeat: GrowLab is in Vancouver. What’s good about Vancouver?

Landa: Let’s be clear. GrowLab is also in San Francisco, and to me what’s most important is the bridge that’s being created between those two cities because I don’t think an accelerator should exist in only one city.

Landa: Actually it’s more in the middle zone of SaaS applications. Infrastructure is how I see enterprise, and I want to lean more toward business applications as opposed to straight consumer … I like business applications or developer tools.

After starting with typical flair and a warning “there will be lots of swearing,” McClure talked about making venture capital work better and how 500 Startups picks and works with its startups.

The first is not a challenge, apparently: “It’s pretty easy, ’cause most VCs suck balls.”

Rates of returns for VCs are horrible, says McClure. He likes a few, including Sequoia, Union Square, and Andreeson Horowitz, but most do not make money.

500 Startups works differently by making make lots of little bets … as many as 200 investments per fund. McClure wants to be right about 20 percent to 25 percent of the time, but he usually only achieves significant success — $100 million exits — on only 20 percent of its investments.

When looking for new entrepreneurs, 500 startups is looking at up to six different factors:

Introductions (Are the founders crazy, liars, or idiots?)

Product (Does it work?)

Market (Are there people who use it?)

Revenue (Will people pay for it?)

Growth: (How can you scale?)

Finance: (What will it cost to get customers; when and how do you make money?)

In addition, when looking at startup teams, McClure wants to see at least three skillsets: hackers, hustlers, and hipsters. Hackers are developers and engineers, hustlers sell and marketer, and hipsters design and build out the user experience.

The shift McClures is seeing (or embodying) is traditional VCs (white guys in suits, apparently) becoming a guild of geeks, mentors, and angels. The legendary PayPal mafia — of which McClure is a card-carrying member — comes to mind.

Entrepreneurs coming to incubators or angels, McClure says, can impress potential investors with trusted referrals (which enable simple due diligence), a functional prototype (which shows that there may be a good team behind the product), and actual revenue (which proves that there’s a market and customers).

Once a company is accepted into an accelerator, it takes a while to sort out winners and losers.

“In six months you’ll know if they don’t suck. In one to two years you’ll know if they’re awesome,” says McClure.

Bonus: Random Dave McClure quotes

“VCs are idiots. Founders are also idiots.”

On accelerators: “It’s not sane, it’s not stable. But success emerges not because of you but because of the environment you create.”

“If you have a choice between being a founder or a VC, be a VC. It’s a way better gig.”

]]>0Dave McClure assaults Vancouver entrepreneurs on angels, VCs, and acceleratorsGrowLab Demo Day 2012: the participantshttp://venturebeat.com/2012/08/22/growlab-demo-day-2012/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/22/growlab-demo-day-2012/#commentsWed, 22 Aug 2012 20:37:47 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=516538I'm at local accelerator GrowLab's demo day today, where the Spring 2012 cohort of 11 startups will be presenting the fruits of their last four months of work in the GrowLab incubator.
]]>VANCOUVER, British Columbia — I’m at local accelerator GrowLab’s demo day today, where the Spring 2012 cohort of 11 startups will be presenting the fruits of their last four months of work in the GrowLab incubator.

]]>0GrowLab Demo Day 2012: the participantsVancouver: Hollywood North’s tech scene is growing, growing, not yet grownhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/08/22/vancouver-hollywood-norths-tech-scene-is-growing-growing-not-yet-grown/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/22/vancouver-hollywood-norths-tech-scene-is-growing-growing-not-yet-grown/#commentsWed, 22 Aug 2012 15:00:47 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=506008Hollywood North? L.A. with rain? The city that riots whenever its hockey team doesn't win the Stanley Cup?
Americans might think of Vancouver in many ways, but typically not as a tech startup mecca.
]]>

Hollywood North? L.A. with rain? The city that riots whenever its hockey team doesn’t win the Stanley Cup?

Americans might think of Vancouver in many ways — but typically not as a tech startup mecca.

And yet Summify, A Thinking Ape, OpenCal, TinySpeck, and PhoneGap are just a few of the city’s better-known startups of the past few years. Along with established-but-still-young companies such as Hootsuite, these startups have joined multinationals Electronic Arts, Sierra Wireless, Pixar, Sony, and Microsoft in the Vancouver area.

Just don’t ask the venture capitalists who take the 3-hour flight north from Silicon Valley. They have their own thoughts about Vancouver startups, but they’re not likely to reveal them to you. They’re too busy trying to snap up undervalued Canadian companies.

Debbie Landa remembers talking to VCs from Bessemer who were coming up to Vancouver a couple of years ago. She’s the chief executive of San Francisco-based Dealmaker Media and doyenne of the GrowLab accelerators as well as the Grow Conference, which is now an annual event in Vancouver (it kicks off today).

Above: A view of Vancouver from the south, with BC Place and Rogers Arena in the foreground.

Image Credit: John Koetsier

“They [the Bessemer VCs] were a little shocked to hear that they were not the first,” Landa told me. “But the first people to register for Grow were VCs from Accel and Battery, and they’re all at each other’s throats in competition.”

Slicing and dicing: big, up-and-comers, and investors

“I see the tech scene in Vancouver in three slices,” Olivier Vincent says.

Vincent’s an entrepreneur with several exits under his belt, including local-search company Canpages for $225 million. Vincent is working on a new startup, Hipparcos Technologies (presently in stealth mode).

“There are the big names, the up-and-coming startups, and the investment community,” Vincent said.

The big names are often regional offices for international technology-related companies: Microsoft, Sony, and Pixar fit into this category, as does Electronic Arts, which maintains a big presence in the Vancouver area. (Rumors have been swirling about Google opening a Vancouver office, but those remain just rumors, according to Leslie Church, a Google public relations representative.)

HootSuite is also becoming a big name, with ambitions to be a billion-dollar company in the social media management space.

Above: Vancouver, Stanley Park, floatplane harbor

Image Credit: John Koetsier

Smaller companies that have developed solid niches and funding include A Thinking Ape, a gaming company; and AirG, the mobile social network with upward of 50 million users, mostly on feature phones. Make5, Suite101, and PC HelpSoft are a few of the others gaining some traction.

Some of the companies of this scale have been acquired: OpenCal by Groupon, PhoneGap by Adobe, and MetroLyrics by CBS, highlighting that one of the challenges in Vancouver is the money side.

VCs flying up from the valley help provide liquidity, but local angels and VCs are in somewhat short supply, meaning that acquisition at fairly lower numbers early in company’s lifecycles is common.

VCs, angels, and Vancouver’s Dave McClure?

One of Vancouver’s most prominent startup investors is Boris Wertz. The other GrowLab founder (with Landa), Wertz is in some sense a Vancouver version of PayPal alumnus and 500 Startups founder Dave McClure. Except, of course, without McClure’s f-bombs and middle fingers.

Wertz has funded about 35 startups through first W Media Ventures and now Version One Ventures, which has raised a $15 million “micro-VC” fund to make $250,000 to $500,000 seed and Series One investments. Summify was one of his investments, and it was also a significant exit when Twitter bought the company for an undisclosed amount.

Above: Downtown Vancouver

Image Credit: John Koetsier

But he doesn’t have enough local competition — as he himself said in an interview with Canada’s Globe & Mail newspaper: “I’d say 90 percent of consumer Internet projects in Vancouver come through me. I wish it weren’t that way. It’s not healthy.”

Healthy or not, Wertz is seeing a lot of new potential in Vancouver, and that is something he likes.

“First of all is money,” Scoble said. “You can’t get funded to do risky weird shit in very many places. Secondly, it’s PR: Most of it is here. Third, it’s talent: The guy who built a 20,000 node server farm for eBay, he lives here. You can’t get that anywhere else.”

Fourth and finally, Scoble said, it’s the culture.

“Just on Sunday walking on the beach I ran into the guy who runs the welding team at Tesla … he lives here, not anywhere else. It happens every single day, and you just don’t have this anywhere else.”

Vancouver’s not there yet, especially on the money and PR side.

But it is a thriving and innovative technology hotbed and, to this point at least, a source of good deals for cheap acquisitions.

And someday, if Wertz’ vision comes to fruition, it could be much more than that.

]]>1Vancouver: Hollywood North’s tech scene is growing, growing, not yet grownGameHouse expands into Canada to focus on social gameshttp://venturebeat.com/2011/12/22/gamehouse-expands-into-canada-to-focus-on-social-games/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/22/gamehouse-expands-into-canada-to-focus-on-social-games/#commentsThu, 22 Dec 2011 16:59:54 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=368762Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific! GameHouse, the game division of RealNetworks, said today it is expanding its social game studio to a new office in Victoria, British Columbia. The new […]
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific!

GameHouse, the game division of RealNetworks, said today it is expanding its social game studio to a new office in Victoria, British Columbia. The new office will double its staff to at least 45 people by the end of 2012.

Seattle-based GameHouse was one of the big players on the casual web, but it lost its pole position as the audience shifted to social games on Facebook. Now the company is making a run at social games again, and it will tap some of the game development talent in Canada to do so. The effort is part of a $10 million investment in social games.

“Social game development is the No. 1 priority for our company in 2012, and the expansion in Victoria was chosen for the city’s high caliber of talent combined with a great quality of life.” said Matt Hulett, chief gamer at GameHouse. “I believe this strategic expansion of our social games studio in Victoria will not only multiply our games portfolio but will also solidify our leadership position in the overall games industry.”

GameHouse has had a couple of successful Facebook games. Collapse! Blast and Bayou Blast launched in the fall and have attracted nearly 400,000 daily players to date. With 3.7 million people playing its social games each month, the company hopes to build its audience so it can become a contender for the big revenues in social games. So far, revenues are growing at triple-digit rates.

The new studio in downtown Victoria will specialize in games for Facebook, Google+ and other emerging social platforms. Alex Mendelev (pictured) is general manager of GameHouse Canada. His approach is to allow designers to express their creative freedom during development.

]]>0GameHouse expands into Canada to focus on social gamesReminder: VentureBeat and DEMO in Vancouver Thursdayhttp://venturebeat.com/2011/06/21/reminder-venturebeat-and-demo-in-vancouver-thursday/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/21/reminder-venturebeat-and-demo-in-vancouver-thursday/#commentsTue, 21 Jun 2011 14:45:02 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=300801Are you an entrepreneur looking to change the world? Well, grab one of the last spots left to present at the VentureBeat/DEMO meetup with Rogers Ventures in Vancouver this Thursday, June 23. If you’re in the area and have a new tech company or product you’re launching soon, this will be a great opportunity to […]
]]>Are you an entrepreneur looking to change the world?

Well, grab one of the last spots left to present at the VentureBeat/DEMO meetup with Rogers Ventures in Vancouver this Thursday, June 23.

If you’re in the area and have a new tech company or product you’re launching soon, this will be a great opportunity to get feedback from the DEMO team (I’m executive producer) and a few senior partners from Rogers.

We’ll be selecting up to 10 companies to meet with us at Bootup Labs (163 West Hastings, Suite 200, Vancouver). Please fill out this form to apply. Each team will be given half an hour to present their product and get feedback. We’ll be accepting applicants for the rest of today and will be in touch with you shortly if you are selected.

Following the presentations, we’ll be hosting a party at RepublicGrandville Room Bar (957 Granville Street, Vancouver) for the entire Vancouver tech crowd. Join us along with local entrepreneurs and VCs, and a group of DEMO alumni and past attendees. Please register for this event here. The first 50 people through the door will get a drink on us.

]]>0Reminder: VentureBeat and DEMO in Vancouver ThursdayVentureBeat and DEMO head to Canada — calling all Vancouver startups!http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/29/venturebeat-and-demo-head-to-canada-vancouver-companies-stop-by/
http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/29/venturebeat-and-demo-head-to-canada-vancouver-companies-stop-by/#commentsMon, 29 Nov 2010 11:57:36 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=229094If you’re a technology entrepreneur or professional in the Vancouver area, please join us for a cocktail meetup at George Lounge in downtown Vancouver. The meetup takes place on Thursday, December 2 from 6-8pm. The first 50 drinks are on VentureBeat and DEMO, which is the conference we co-produce every six months that showcases awesome […]
]]>If you’re a technology entrepreneur or professional in the Vancouver area, please join us for a cocktail meetup at George Lounge in downtown Vancouver.

The meetup takes place on Thursday, December 2 from 6-8pm. The first 50 drinks are on VentureBeat and DEMO, which is the conference we co-produce every six months that showcases awesome emerging tech products. The address is 1137 Hamilton Street. Please register here if you’d like to come.

This is my first time hitting Canadian soil, so I’m jazzed. As VentureBeat begins to expand its coverage of tech companies globally, it’s about time we made it up to Canada.

Separately, prior to the meetup, I’m taking meetings with up to six entrepreneurs who are contemplating launching technology products soon (they may be eyeing the upcoming DEMO event February 27 – March 1 in Palm Desert, or possibly DEMO in fall 2011). The meetings will be held at The Westin Grand hotel downtown, and I’ll be providing feedback on the ideas. If you’d like to attend one of these meetings, please fill out this form, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible with a time to meet.

Sutus is a Vancouver-area company that launched at DEMO last year, and raved about the press coverage it got.

This is part of my ongoing quest to find the best companies from around the world to launch at DEMO, an event where we select 60 or so finalists to demo their product to the world’s leading technology press corps. DEMO is where everyone from Netscape, to E-Trade, Boingo, Palm, Symantec, Salesforce.com, and VMWare have launched over the years. Aside from the press, DEMO is also attended by leading venture capitalists as well as corporate and business-development execs. It’s an awesome event for getting unprecedented publicity and for striking deals.

]]>8VentureBeat and DEMO head to Canada — calling all Vancouver startups!Social news-reader Summify raises funds to solve information overloadhttp://venturebeat.com/2010/08/24/social-news-reader-summify-raises-funds-to-solve-information-overload/
http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/24/social-news-reader-summify-raises-funds-to-solve-information-overload/#commentsTue, 24 Aug 2010 22:00:38 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=208414Have you ever opened your RSS reader and felt like you’re gazing into the abyss at the gazillion unread items? Have you felt the guilty satisfaction of using the “Mark all as read” option? If so, Summify, a startup based in Vancouver, Canada, might be the answer to your prayers. Fresh out of startup incubator […]
]]>Have you ever opened your RSS reader and felt like you’re gazing into the abyss at the gazillion unread items? Have you felt the guilty satisfaction of using the “Mark all as read” option? If so, Summify, a startup based in Vancouver, Canada, might be the answer to your prayers.

Fresh out of startup incubator Bootup Labs, Summify has just announced an undisclosed seed round of funding from Boris Wertz of W Media Ventures, an angel fund active in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. The startup develops a social news-reader meant to help you “consume your river of news in minutes, rather than hours”, it says.

The two founders, former Google and Microsoft engineering interns, developed an algorithm that aggregates all the news from your Google Reader and Twitter accounts, eliminates the duplicates, and filters the most important news using social reactions: tweets, likes, shares and comments.

The information overload is a longtime problem, and many startups failed trying to come up with a solution. Even big names are now in the race for the best news personalization award. One of them is the New Digg, which displays top news as voted (or dugg) by the people you follow. However, while the New Digg uses only diggs to rate important news, Summify feeds on existing social reactions. “We could even integrate diggs from the New Digg into our algorithm”, says Mircea Pasoi, one of the founders.

Another competitor is Flipboard, a social magazine for iPad, which only aggregates Twitter and Facebook articles, offering no support for RSS at this time.

As for Summify’s business model, the founders say that’s still to be determined. They are focusing now on building a solution and getting traction. “We are convinced that anyone who solves the information overload/news personalization problem on a large scale will also be able to monetize such a service”, says Mircea. Let’s hope they’re right.